What Went Wrong
by Lanie L Sullivan
Summary: This story is a bit of an extended tag to FFFT, but also a follow-up to TWWH to add some explanation on what went wrong with Amanda's marriage to Joe and move our heroes closer together. Response to a challenge. Complete. Rated T for some language and mild innuendo.


**AN:** This is a response to the "explain the unexplained" challenge. The prompt: write a filler for any of the incomplete or unexplained things on the show, 3000 words or less. This story will tackle two unexplained things at once; one, why Lee chose the brother/sister cover in FFFT and two, why Amanda was so reluctant to talk about her divorce. Takes place after the dinner immediately following FFFT.

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"Thank you for the wonderful dinner," Amanda beamed as she and Lee finished the after-dinner cleanup and walked from his kitchen to the dining room. "And you were right," she added as she picked up her wine glass from the dining table. "This _is_ a very special bottle of wine."

"Whaddya say we go finish it in the living room?" he suggested as he flashed her a dimpled smile as he picked up his own glass and placed his free hand on the small of her back.

"Sounds good," she readily agreed.

As they sat together on the sofa, he said, "You know you didn't have to help me with the cleanup."

"Oh, I know, but you went to all the trouble of cooking and picking out a nice bottle of wine and adding the candlelight and..." She flushed slightly as she noticed him gazing at her intently. "And...well, everything that I just thought it was only right that I should help out."

"Well, I'd say you earned it after everything you just went through on this case, especially being locked in a freezer with Francine of all people," he replied with a chuckle.

"Speaking of the case, I have to ask you a question." She sipped nervously at her wine before continuing, "Why'd you do it? The cover, I mean, with us as brother and sister?"

He let out a sigh and answered, "It's complicated."

She shot him a scolding look and countered, "So simplify it."

"I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you why I chose that cover if you tell me why you got so mad about it."

She nodded. "Fair enough, but you first."

"Okay." He took a drink of his wine and swallowed hard before beginning, "It was because of Joe. I mean you and I had been...seeing more and more of each other outside of work and I just...I didn't know where I stood with you now that he's back in your life."

"Wait a minute." She gazed at him in confusion. "He's _not_ back in my life," she protested.

"Isn't he? Even though we didn't talk about it, we both know you saw me there at Dooley's that night and that I saw you dancing with him."

"It was _one_ dance and all we really did was talk about the boys. He's missed them so much and I was just catching him up on what they've been up to."

"But he's been hanging around the house a lot lately too," Lee pointed out.

"He has, that's true, but only to spend time with Phillip and Jamie. I'm not part of that equation. He knows that."

"Does he?" he questioned skeptically.

"Yes, he does. We talked about it that night at Dooley's as a matter of fact, when he jokingly asked me if I wanted to go back."

"Are you sure he was joking?"

"Yes, Lee, he was. He knows that too much has happened for us to ever go back."

"You care to elaborate?" he asked. He knew there were still things about her divorce that she wasn't saying.

"I will," she nodded. "But first, the other half of our deal...the reason I got so mad."

"I'm listening," he probed.

"Well, first let me start by explaining why I went through all the trouble of talking to you about my preference for leaving the window open and the bathroom thing and...well, I'm sure you remember." When he nodded in acknowledgement, she went on, "When we had that little chat on my patio about you needing a business partner and I said that it didn't matter what kind of business, it felt..." She sighed again. "The way we were back to flirting a bit, it felt like we were our old selves again; you know, like we were before Joe came back and I thought..." She trailed off and gripped her wineglass tightly staring into the dark red liquid unable to meet his eyes.

Lee reached to lift her chin up and searched her eyes for what was on her mind. "You thought what?"

"I...um...I thought..." She shook her head. "It's like you said, we've been seeing each other for a couple of months now and we're finally in a place where neither of us has been seeing anyone else and I thought...well, more like hoped really, that we might finally...finally...you know...consummate our relationship."

"Ohhhhh," he drawled slowly as realization dawned. "That's why you invited me in for coffee?"

She nodded. "It wasn't really the coffee that I wanted. It was you," she confessed.

He set his glass down on the coffee table and then leaned back on the couch, staring at the ceiling as he marveled at his own stupidity. "I'm an idiot."

"No, you're not. I'm the idiot for not coming right out and talking to you about things. I should've known better given the way things fell apart with Joe."

He turned to look at her again. "What _did_ happen there...really?"

"A lot of things and some of it's not going to be stuff that you're going to want to hear."

"Still listening," he gently prodded as he gently squeezed her hand to reassure her. "You can tell me anything."

"I already told you about his frequent travels and that there was a point where we were apart for a couple of years, but what I didn't tell was the whole story about that time. It was 1979 when it started and he was bouncing from one place to another to another. When he was getting ready to leave, we had this huge fight about the same old thing; he wanted me to go with him and I wanted him to stay home. It was the worst fight we ever had about it and I admit that I was so angry that I gave him an ultimatum; stay home or don't come home at all."

"Ouch," Lee commented.

"Yeah, it was pretty ugly. Anyway, he didn't come home for another year and then only for about a month. He was here for Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1980, but then left again before New Year's only this time when he came home, it was different. I really, really wanted to still make our marriage work and so I was all set to give him a proper welcome home. I had set up this whole romantic dinner, wine candles, the whole thing." She looked down at the floor. "I even had some new lingerie that I was going to wear for him, but it never got that far."

He grimaced slightly at the thought of her buying sexy lingerie for her ex, but quickly covered it with a curious look. "How come?"

"Well, he'd pretty much guessed what I had planned for the evening and that's when he confessed that shortly after our fight, he'd...um...he'd cheated on me when he was in Japan."

"That son of a bitch," Lee swore.

Amanda chuckled dryly. "That was pretty much my thought at the time. I was so angry with him, so hurt. He told me it was just a one-time thing and that it didn't mean anything to him; that he was just lonely and confused and...I-I-I couldn't handle it. I even wondered a few times if it was my ultimatum that led him to cheat in the first place. I mean, I was the one who told him if he left again, not to come back."

"Why should you think that? You were the one being left behind and working your ass off to keep a nice home for him to return to, raising his kids by yourself and then he did that to you. Fight or not, ultimatum or not, he made his choice."

"Yeah, but if he thought that I really wouldn't take him back, maybe that's _why_ he did it. I'm not saying that makes it right and it doesn't take away the hurt he caused me, but still, I can't help wondering about it at times."

"Still not your fault. He made his bed...literally." Lee shook his head. "There's a couple of things I don't get though. You were still married to him for another two years after that and none of that's in your divorce paperwork. Why?"

"Because there's more to the story and this is the part that you're not going to like and why I was so reluctant to talk to you about all of this stuff." She finished off her wine and set the glass down.

"Go on," he urged her.

She turned back to face him, clinging to his hand for support. "Just promise me you'll hear me out and let me finish the whole story without interrupting."

"I promise," he agreed.

"Good." She breathed a sigh of relief and confessed guiltily, "The truth is that Joe wasn't the only one who cheated. I did too." Off his stunned look, she quickly added, "Let me explain." When he nodded, she laid out the details for him. "I already told you that he left before the new year, but while he was home, things were really tense between us after that. We put on a brave front for the sake of the boys, but he spent the whole month sleeping on the pullout in the living room. Knowing what he did, I-I just couldn't sleep beside him. Anyway, he hadn't planned to leave again that soon, but things were so bad between us that when his boss called with another job for him, he jumped at the chance to get away again."

"Asshole," Lee muttered.

"Lee..." she said in a warning tone.

"I'm sorry, go on. What happened next?" He lightly stroked the hand he still held with his thumb.

"Well, this time there wasn't any argument about whether he should stay or go. He just said he wanted to go and I told him he should. The hurt was still so raw that I didn't want to be around him any more than he wanted to be around me. I was angry that he cheated and he was angry that I couldn't even think of forgiving him. I refused to even talk to him about it at all and it got to the point that we couldn't stand to even be in the same room anymore. Then New Year's Eve came and I'd been working for weeks on organizing this benefit for the children's hospital and while I really didn't have any desire to go to a party trying to pretend everything was normal, I still went because I had an obligation."

"Understandable," he commented.

"The thing is, for the first time since Joe and I married, I took my wedding ring off. I was so heartbroken that he'd violated my trust in him and our marriage vows that I couldn't take looking at it. I ended up going to the party without it because I just couldn't keep pretending to be happily married. While I was there, I happened to meet this man...a doctor who was a visiting surgeon. I'd seen him around once or twice doing my volunteer work for the hospital, but I'd never really met him. Anyway, he was sweet and charming. He asked me to dance a couple of times and as the night wore on, he got more flirtatious and I-I never once told him that I was married. I even let him kiss me at midnight. Then when the party was winding down, he...um...he asked me up to his hotel room in the same building and I-I-I didn't hesitate for a second."

"Wow," Lee let out a low whistle.

"Yeah, it was the one and only time in my life that I ever had a one-night stand. I left his room before dawn the next morning and never saw him again, but, God, it was the most incredible sex of my life."

"Really?" He looked at her with an arched eyebrow.

She flushed at the intensity of his gaze. "Well, it wasn't so much that he did anything particularly special. It was more that he made me feel sexy and desirable; something that Joe hadn't done in a long time. He'd gotten to where he saw me so much as just a housewife and mother that he stopped seeing that I was a woman with my own needs and desires. This other man, he just...he just wanted to be with me. He told me I was beautiful and more than that; he made me _feel_ beautiful, but it was wrong. I never should've let things go that far and I've felt horribly guilty about it ever since then."

"Did you tell Joe about it?"

She nodded. "Oh yeah. When he came back home again a year later. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I hadn't. What surprised me though is that we didn't fight about it. We finally sat down and really talked and he asked me if my little fling was just retaliation for him cheating."

"Wasn't it?"

"No, not entirely, not anymore than his cheating was retaliation for me giving him that ultimatum. I mean, obviously, I'd never have been tempted if it hadn't been for him cheating first, but still, I made my own choice and when I did, I wasn't thinking about revenge; I just...I just needed something he wasn't giving me. I needed to feel wanted, especially since I knew he'd slept with someone else. Even though he said it was only a one-time thing, I wasn't sure I believed him and I couldn't help wondering if he just didn't want me anymore at all."

"I can understand that. You know, it's funny. I've always heard that the top two reasons marriages fail is either sex or money. I guess in this case, it was not having a great sex life." He couldn't help the smug smile that crossed his face.

"Oh, stop!" she scolded. "It wasn't like that. My sex life with Joe was never bad, just absent for too long. But all of this...this is why I didn't want to tell you the whole story. I didn't want you to think of me differently once you knew I'd cheated on Joe."

"Come on, Amanda, look at my past. I'm hardly one to be judgmental."

"But you never committed adultery, did you?" she pointed out.

"No, but I've never been married either," he reminded her. "Who's to say that I wouldn't have done the same thing in your place? You said yourself that you were heartbroken and angry and believe me, I've done some stupid things when I was angry that I later lived to regret."

"Yeah, I guess that's true," she conceded.

"But I still have one more question that you didn't really clear up. Why wasn't any of this stuff brought up during your divorce?"

"Because the cheating on both sides wasn't really the cause of the divorce," she explained. "It was more a symptom of the real problem; that we just weren't talking to each other anymore, not about anything of importance. We were no longer on the same page about where our future was headed. We finally just admitted that we couldn't go back again and that there was too much damage done to keep trying to repair it. If we'd been talking instead of fighting, I might never have thrown that ultimatum at him, Joe might never have cheated and it's for sure that I wouldn't have. But just to be clear, I don't blame Joe a bit for what I did. I blame myself. I made a stupid decision in the heat of the moment and I've had to live with the guilt from it ever since then."

"But yet you still remember it as the most incredible sex of your life," he teased.

She slapped at his chest playfully and gave him a perturbed look. "Is that all you're taking away from this?"

"No, of course not," he answered sincerely. "We've all done things in our lives that we're not proud of, but the important thing is that we learn from them, right?"

"I guess," she shrugged. "That's part of why I wanted to come clean with you. I don't want us not to talk about things like what happened with Joe and me."

"Good." He squeezed her hand and then grinned devilishly at her. "What I _was_ thinking earlier is that a sure-fire way to stop remembering that as the most incredible experience of your life is to replace that memory with one that's even better." He released her hand and draped an arm across her shoulder to pull her closer. "It's worth testing out the theory, right?"

"Oh?" She smiled flirtatiously and shifted onto his lap as she snaked her arms around his neck. "And I suppose you just happen to have a man in mind to test that theory on?"

"Well, I did promise to warm you up after your time in the freezer, didn't I?" He ran his hands down her back to rest on her hips.

"You know, I am feeling pretty warm already," she breathed heavily as she leaned her head against his, their lips scant inches apart. "But after an ordeal like that, you can never be too warm."

"Exactly my thinking," he responded as he captured her lips with his own.


End file.
